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OMG IM SPEAK NOT BAD 4 GRAMMAR LOL

Despite the many worries, instant messaging, e-mail, and SMS don't …

Convincing college freshmen of writing's importance is not a job for the faint of heart. Writing teachers across the country (myself included) have long tried to motivate students by explaining that the ability to write is an asset in almost every career. We would point students to studies by groups like the National Commission on Writing, which found that "people who cannot write and communicate clearly will not be hired, and if already working, are unlikely to last long enough to be considered for promotion." The group also found that remedial writing instruction costs US corporations alone over $3 billion each year.

The student response was predictable—they nodded and smiled, but none of them believed a word of it. Most had plans to become executives, lawyers, or politicians. As we all know, these professions never deal with the written word.

Teachers have long worried that students can no longer spell and write well, and many believe that the lack of such education is only made worse by students' use of e-mail, SMS, and instant messaging—forms not known for their purity of grammar. New research finds that instant messaging in particular isn't quite the cesspool that many make it out to be.

Researchers at the University of Toronto found that more than three-quarters of Canadian teens use IM on a regular basis, but that the writing is surprisingly sophisticated. Though they often use informal diction and bizarre acronyms, the research found that students also use more formal phrasing than expected, and turn out to be talented at switching between different registers. "Everybody thinks kids are ruining their language by using instant messaging," says Sali Tagliamonte, one of the study's authors, "but these teens' messaging shows them expressing themselves flexibly through all registers. They actually show an extremely lucid command of the language. We shouldn?t worry."

The finding fits with earlier US research which found that people using instant messaging don't lose their ability to spell. Instead, IM users still recognize and often correct errors in their messages, although it is true that such self-correction was less accurate than correction by an independent proofreader.

Worries about the language skills of young people are not confined to North America. The rise of computers and mobile phones have spread this linguistic anxiety across the globe, from India to Australia to the UK.

While some are worried, others have embraced this brave new world of abbreviated language. One Australian with a lot of time on his hands translated the entire Bible into SMS-speak in only four weeks, turning well-known passages like Psalm 23 into, "U, Lord, r my shepherd. I will neva be in need. U let me rest in fields of green grass. U lead me 2 streams of peaceful water."